Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

‘Read it and stay single’

I suppose it’s not a compromise if only one of you considers it such, but that was what our compromises tended to look like. One of us was always angry. Amy, usually.

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

Well, there are all kinds of men, his most damning phrase, the second half left unsaid, and you are the wrong kind.

meta-get.

Hungry Hungry Hippos,

a lazy game of cancer catch.

dim sum place,

reverse O. Henry.

deedle-de-dum

People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.)

Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only . . . and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes.

Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?

Amy always phoned right back. It had been three hours, and I’d left five messages, and Amy had not phoned back.

A Brooklyn brownstone my parents bought for us,

‘You’d literally lie, cheat, and steal – hell, kill – to convince people you are a good guy,’

Like a kid, I went to fetch Gilpin. My mommy-in-law wants to talk to you.

Then comes sex and a stiff drink and a night of sleep in a sweet, exhausted rats’ tangle in our big, soft bed. Poor me.

I saw my wife, blood clotting her blond hair, weeping and blind in pain, scraping herself along our kitchen floor. Calling my name. Nick, Nick, Nick!

Well, I think it’s wonderful. And my dad flipped the TV off and said, It’s a joke. You know it’s a goddamn joke. Like watching a monkey ride a bike.

basically – but I can’t deal with angry or tearful women.

Amy could tell you about that. She would definitely tell you, if she were here.

and I involuntarily turned steel. My father again: Men don’t cry.

So there it came, out of nowhere, as Rand begged for his daughter’s return: a killer smile.

It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment,

These jobless men will proclaim Nick a great guy as he buys their drinks on a credit card linked to my bank account.

Except for tonight. I know, I know, I’m being a girl.

We’ll be okay no matter what. My money is your money.’

Being married to Nick always reminds me: People have to do awful things for money.

Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry – the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds.

because our father always wanted to be able to leave quickly, from anywhere.

(although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative).

The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.

Because there wasn’t really plenty of time. Amy was thirty-seven when we moved to Carthage. She’d be thirty-nine in October.

The recession had ended the mall. Computers had ended the Blue Book plant. Carthage had gone bust; its sister city Hannibal was losing ground to brighter, louder, cartoonier tourist spots. My beloved Mississippi River was being eaten in reverse by Asian carp flip-flopping their way up toward Lake Michigan. Amazing Amy was done. It was the end of my career, the end of hers, the end of my father, the end of my mom. The end of our marriage. The end of Amy.

I felt my soul deflate. Amy was using the treasure hunt to steer us back to each other. And it was too late. While she had been writing these clues, she’d had no idea of my state of mind. Why, Amy, couldn’t you have done this sooner?

Sometimes I feel like Nick has decided on a version of me that doesn’t exist.

think: If that had been me, he’d complain that I was being too sensitive.

She resented that it was my birthday and not our anniversary: Once again I’d chosen me over us.

who uprooted me to be closer to his ailing parents, seems to have lost all interest in both me and said ailing parents.

The resentment my Manhattanite wife feels at this detour in her previously charmed life.

jacket copy: People behaved mostly well and then they died.

And then I knew I didn’t love Amy anymore.

Love makes you want to be a better man – right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

became a cheating man of all seasons – a cheat with a pleasantly impatient mistress – it became clear that something would have to be done.

He begins his lie. I don’t even listen.

What an odd man, I thought. Who compares another man’s wife to a bath he wants to sink into? Another man’s missing wife?

He kisses me and says this place is where he stuttered and suffered through so many dates,